Christian Lacroix has designs on Louvre-Lens Iran show

Darling, sweetie…. Christian Lacroix, the fashion guru made famous by Edina and Patsy in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, will design a major exhibition opening at the Louvre-Lens museum in northern France next year. The Empire of the Roses (28 March-22 July 2018) focuses on Iranian art of the 18th and 19th centuries. “While many historians have studied the numerous civilisations which have flourished in this country three times the size of France, far fewer have focused on the 18th and 19th centuries,” the organisers say. This is not Lacroix’s first foray into exhibitions; in 2011, he was artistic director of the show L’Orient des Femmes, a survey of Middle Eastern fashion, at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris.